Pictured above is a fish with a baseball in its mouth. Was it put there to silence his entreaties and complaints? Or is this how the fish catches the baseball?

Or was the ball placed in the fish’s mouth in order to provide a brief amusement — an amusement designed to make someone forget, for a fugitive moment, that he, like the fish, will one day die and that what lies beyond is as unknowable as it is unavoidable and that a nothingness that spans the black balance of forever might constitute … the best for which we can hope?

The fish with a baseball in its mouth is dead. And so we all shall be, probably sooner than we dare to contemplate. Is there meaning to be found in the inexorable misery that is as much a part of us as blood, bones, viscera, and dreams reduced to momentary consolations? It scarcely matters.